Best Companies to Work For: Blue Box

Organizational change is never an easy feat. Companies have many moving parts and gears that need to operate seamlessly with each other. And when one part becomes loose, cracked, or broken, then the entire organization breaks down.

That is, unless you maintain it by checking on it frequently.

Meet ...

Blue Box, a cloud-computing services organization, was making changes to their leadership team and changing the direction of the business from what they had historically sold to a totally new product. The employees got nervous when the changes started happening.

Founder and CTO Jesse Proudman explains:

"Nobody likes change. This happens through every start-up. Through a period of turmoil, there are folks who do get concerned and look for other options. For us, the loss of that inherent knowledge in everything we do can be really, really painful."

Uncovering Concerns During Change

In the past, Blue Box has asked their people questions. But they just couldn't get people to step up and ask those sensitive questions in front of their peers.

Through an anonymous survey platform, they realized that you can manage what you measure. The organization was able to showcase to their employees their commitment to transparency, listening to feedback, and acting on it, which helped them save critical members of their team.

Many organizations forget that you can't just solicit employee feedback. An anonymous platform allows people to be candid with their concerns and not feel as if they will suffer any negative implications from speaking up. In the words of Proudman, "People are everything."